About the Europiccola giving off too much steam....got another response from a parts vendor: that I screwed up the wiring due to overheating. That the excessive steam is because the wiring is shorting and not turning the heating element off. And that it also may be due to bad heating element as it over heated and is grounded and taking voltage to keep heating non-stop. Also suggests checking the heating element for continuity, whatever that means. Thinks I need new wiring, pstat and maybe heating element. Yikes, that's a lot. Thought I'd share this. Thanks for the help so far.

Can you show us a photo of the wiring underneath? It would be good to inspect that for damage.

Checking continuity of the heating element means making sure it has a complete circuit. But it must have a complete circuit or it wouldn't be heating, so that's odd.

Not sure if this photo is good enough or not. All the wires look good but you can see on the top left the plastic covering looks burnt.

A closer look at the wire connecting to the upper heating element terminal would be good. There's rust starting at the lower left edge in the photo. You probably want to scour that off and put high temp rust resistant paint on it to keep it from spreading.

Thanks a lot! And will do the rust work if we can get this working again!

baristaal wrote:....got another response from a parts vendor ... Thinks I need new wiring, pstat and maybe heating element. Yikes, that's a lot. Thought I'd share this.

Thanks for sharing, but I wouldn't be too concerned about that yet. I think your vendor was coming up with some outside possibilities.

Your machine is wired so that the element circuit gets live from the power switch, and the pStat opens the circuit on the neutral side of the load. So theoretically, a fault to ground near the neutral side of the element could cause it to carry current through the element to ground irrespective of the pStat being open or closed. If that is happening, then yikes. Do you feel a tingle when you touch the machine?

You should run the machine on a GFCI protected circuit. If you don't, I recommend adding one, and for now do a test and plug the machine into an outlet that does have one (maybe in the bath?) If you have any fault to ground it will trip the GFCI right away. If it doesn't trip a working GFCI, and it heats up, then you know you have normal continuity across the element terminals.

Your burnt connector might be due to normal heat at that point, and might be due to a poor connection at that connector. Clean the connector and make sure it's on tight. Sometimes a bad crimp connection causes it to burn, but I think the wiring would look burnt if that were the case.

Other than that one connector, the wires look fine.

P.S.
To check continuity you would measure the resistance across the two element terminals (with wires removed) with a multimeter. You expect to see something in the neighborhood of 12 or 13 ohm.

That wiring can be confusing, so I took the liberty of copying and annotating your pic to help show what wires do what.

Thanks. Am getting help from a neighbor to check the terminals. Appreciate the help.

homeburrero wrote:Oh, and do check that safety valve (as Robert suggested) first. If that's it, is an easy peazy fix.

Now I've started worrying. I said it was easy, and it usually is, but if you were to take a wrench to the top part of that assembly and unscrew the whole valve body fitting rather than just the top spring housing, it would not be easy at all. You would need to retrieve the nut and washer that would have fallen down to the bottom of the boiler, then rig the right wrench to secure it so you could get the valve body back in.

So if you start to unscrew the top part of that valve and note that the nut on the boiler wants to move with it, stop! You will need a very thin 16mm wrench to make sure that valve body stays put while you remove the top spring housing part. If you're a bicyclist (or know a bicyclist who loans tools) you can use a 16mm cone wrench for that.

Here are a couple pics that show that valve body (and a cone wrench) and how the other parts go onto the body. This is an example of a steel ball valve in good shape. The orifice is smooth and clean, the bb is clean with no corrosion or pitting, and the spring is in good shape.

That's helpful, thanks. I was actually planning on the bicycle wrench, but the pics are helpful. I'm going to first get a friend to help me test the connectivity and the pressure, and then we'll move on to the next step. In the meantime we're using a Delonghi backup machine and considering a Francis Francis that takes grinds as well as pods, but I think neither will make as good as the Pavoni!